At the beginning of this century, the world watched Zimbabwe crumble. We witnessed that country lose its accolades of glory to become that place people run away from.
Zimbabwe used to be the bread basket of Africa – an enviable land where we lost some of our productive men and women who went there and never came back.
It only took the foolishness of a few politicians for the country to fall, men whose pride blinded them to future implications of their actions. Today, that country is gone, and we are beginning to witness what we saw in Zimbabwe here at home.
While the death of Zimbabwe was drastic – crumbling to the bottom like a book suddenly knocked off shelf, the death of our country has been slow and gradual.
The illness that will kill Malawi was diagnosed as far back as 1994 when new men came to power and liked the taste of sugar smeared on their mouths by their new glory. This is the time corruption and incompetency started to take root in Malawi.
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The dawn of multiparty democracy brought us leaders who do not deserve to be called by that name. Ever since, we have shuffled such people in leadership positions; characters who have nothing to offer the country and are only in it for their own selfish gains.
Today, politicians do not care which of their friends occupy this or that position as a Cabinet minister or a director of a State agency. They just want to share the cake that is left among themselves so that they finish us off as soon as they can.
So, when you see top government officials giving jobs to their under-qualified relatives, do not be surprised. When you see a questionable character ascending to be a minister in a crucial ministry, do not ask any questions.
Even the person giving these positions to these people does not know what they are doing. For decades, this has been how we do things, and it is the reason this country is on its deathbed.
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It is sad that, today, we only sing songs of the glories of our past. We keep telling our children, who are suffering in this heat, that there was once a country here; this generation of youths who waste time winding their waists on TikTok or trading barbs on X only hear that there was a time nobody slept hungry in this country.
They are only told by their grandparents that we had industries, functioning systems of transport, and that the kwacha used to rub shoulders with the British Pound.
That was the time when we had a country, and that country was there because we had intelligent and sensible leaders who cared about the fate of the nation.
Malawi is a failed State today because we replaced those leaders with clowns. We have people in positions of power who have no solutions to our problems and yet we keep them there.
It is embarrassing, for example, for directors in the energy sector to tell us that we must be understanding, when we have no fuel.
The government is failing to invest, engage in meaningful trade and generate foreign currency so that the economy recovers and their answer to the economic owes is that Malawians must get used to this mess.
Are we serious that these are the kind of leaders that we need in this country? Are we sure that this is the best we can do when it comes to leadership?
The simple answer to these questions is no. Our country is in the hands of wrong people and that is why we are going down the deep abyss of hell.
We chose people who have no clue about how to run a government, and that decision has come back to bite us.
The Tonse Alliance administration even fails to come up with a convincing cabinet, and we expect them to revive the economy?
This administration has never lived up to its billing, and it will not in the next year of so of its mandate. Yet while the country crumbles, the thoughts of our politicians are on how they will lie to us in order to win the next election. There is no hope here and Malawians must stand up before the worst happens.
